Fiefs
The villages, towns, and castles scattered about the map are known collectively as fiefs. Each one is owned by a vassal or, in the case of the capital city of a faction, the ruler of that faction. They can change hands a few different ways, the most common way being during wartime. Villages, unlike castles and towns, cannot be captured directly. Instead, they are associated with a nearby castle or town and when the castle or town is captured, so is the village. Initial Lords Every time you start a new game, the ownership of villages and castles is randomized with only a few exceptions. Towns are typically assigned to powerful lords and do not change. Acquiring a fief There are a few ways of getting hold of fiefs, most of which involve capturing them after a siege. Personal fiefs Personal fiefs can be obtained by capturing a town or castle while not a vassal of any lord. This can be difficult as defenders of towns and castles are hundreds strong and if you are not a member of a faction you will not have any allies to help you. Once captured, it can be very hard to keep a fief under your control, as factions may decide to declare war on you at any time and huge armies, often with more than a thousand men, will attack each village one by one, which is extremely difficult to stop. penissss Becoming a vassal When you become a vassal you will be granted the poorest village in the faction you've joined, usually a village that recently has been looted. If you are playing as a female, the lord who owns the castle associated with that village will dislike you, and deny you entry to his castle. Once your relation with that lord improves, you will gain access to it. If you are playing a female character the king of your chosen faction will say that giving a fief to a woman will cause other nobles to think he has been 'bewitched'. You can choose to fight fiefless for the king, or reconsider taking your vows of allegiance. However, when a female character with a lot of renown (in order of 700+) becomes a vassal she will probably have no trouble getting a fief like a male character. Having a much lower renown isn't a hindrance as long as you're on good terms with your liege. In Warband, a vote is cast to decide which lord gets the property every time a castle or town is captured by your faction. By telling a vassal that you support his choice, you will be rewarded with some points in relation towards him/her. This can be done once for each village, town or castle your faction acquires, which should net you a lot of friends in the long run. Another way is to work as a mercenary against the faction you'd like to join, and any time you capture a lord (especially the king) you will usually gain a bonus to your relationship with that lord along with bonus honor when you release him from captivity. Once many of the lords in that faction like you (again, especially the king), you should have no trouble gaining fief after fief once you swear fealty. A king may ask you to become his vassal. This may occur after winning all tournaments, or after achieving a certain level of renown while having an overall positive standing with that faction. Faction fiefs Capturing fiefs as a member (vassal) of a faction can only happen when your faction is at war with another faction. The marshal of your faction will summon lords of the same faction, then ride into enemy territory, possibly capturing castles and towns along the way. Keeping a captured fief for yourself (even if you captured it without the help of allies) is not guaranteed. The calculation to decide who gets a captured fief is based on renown, the current number of properties they own, and an element of luck: * Take renown and add 500 as a base value. * Divide by the 'ownership factor' which is 1+( owned towns *3)+( owned castles *2)+ owned villages. If you own two castles and three villages, the score would be 1+0*3+2*2+3=8 * Multiply by a random number between 50 and 100. * The one who conquered the fief gets his score multiplied by 1.5. * Add twice the relationship value with the king to the score. * If you captured the fief yourself and did not request that the fief be awarded to you, your score is reduced. The player is only given the fief if he gets the highest score of all lords in his faction. In Warband, you can try to persuade other vassals that you deserve the fief. If successful, their renown will be added to yours in the calculation. Owning a fief Once you have a fief, there are a few things to remember. Taxes Owning a fief allows you to collect taxes from the populace every week (taxes accumulate, so you don't have to visit every week). In Warband, you automatically receive taxes and do not have to visit to collect them. Towns earn the most base taxes, villages second, and castles the least. The prosperity of each fief also affects the amount of taxes they produce. You can raise the prosperity of a town by making sure that its caravans reach their destinations, and by completing quests from its Guildmaster. For villages, stop it from being raided, kill bandits if they invade, build improvements, and get quests from its Village Elder. Also, when repeatedly purchasing imported goods from a town or village, the prosperity will eventually drop due to the lack of these goods, and they will no longer be available until trade has returned them, which can take a rather long time. Reputation Once a village belongs to you or to your faction you can't loot and burn it, although you can still force the peasants to give you supplies. If you are already disliked by a village that becomes your fief, the villagers will remember and hate you, but you can still collect your taxes as usual. However, you will be unable to get recruits from this village. You can see your reputation in brackets in the description at the top along with a word describing how much they like or hate you, for example "acceptive", "resentful", "hate you with a passion", etc. If you intend to take part in sieges to earn further fiefs for yourself, you should avoid raiding nearby villages so that they will still like you when you own them. Burning villages also decreases their prosperity, which affects the taxes and recruits you can collect, so it is a good idea to make sure any villages you may come to own are in as good a condition as possible. Wealth The taxes a fief generates are linked to its wealth, ranging from very poor to very rich. Improving a fief's wealth increases taxes and the amount of recruits you can obtain there. Improving a fief's wealth is no easy task; once it is looted, the wealth will drop back to very poor for a rather long time. Improving the wealth is done by a range of actions. Increasing reputation: this represents how happy the residents are with your rule. When your people hate you they will leave first chance they get and the village will not grow beyond average, so you must improve the reputation to 0 or higher to gain any real wealth in your fiefs. Patrolling: villagers need to go to a nearby town to obtain new resources and to sell their own surplus. Patrolling your terrain to make sure your villagers are not attacked and enslaved along the route is needed if you wish to improve the fief's wealth, which can pose a problem to lords who have a wide range of fiefs. Trade: if the town the villagers trade in is poor, prices will be high, resulting in less affordable goods. Your villagers notice this too, as the wealth of the town largely influences the wealth of the villages and vice versa. A town with two poor villages and one average will tend to become poor after some time, due to the lack of production in the villages, and therefore lack of production in the town itself. The town will increase back to average if the villages near it are at average too, as this allows the town to produce more trade goods which will attract traders who will also bring new goods. After some time this will increase the wealth of the town and give your village a chance to increase its own wealth, as it is directly linked to the town. To successfully improve the wealth of your fiefs, you should do all of the above, and for an extended amount of time. Depending on your own goals it might not be worth the effort to increase the wealth, as it takes a long time to actually do so and if you stop patrolling the region for a short amount of time the bandits will return and rob your villagers blind. Bugs Subject to a bug in 1.143 which shows troop names instead of fief names in dispute dialogs. Category:Gameplay